Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Anger is not a state you sit inside. It is the opening move of a sequence, and a sequence can be interrupted.
Think of it as a run of steps: something lands, the body leans in, the story forms, the mouth opens. Every step is somewhere a wedge can go, and the earlier the wedge the smaller it needs to be. Leaving the room at step two costs a great deal less than an apology after step four.
Qur’an and Sunnah
do not be like the man in the whale who called out in distress (Quran 68:48). The instruction is aimed at the storming off, which is a step a person can still be talked out of.
فَٱصۡبِرۡ لِحُكۡمِ رَبِّكَ وَلَا تَكُن كَصَاحِبِ ٱلۡحُوتِ إِذۡ نَادَىٰ وَهُوَ مَكۡظُومࣱ
Wait patiently [Prophet] for your Lord’s judgement: do not be like the man in the whale who called out in distress
Qur’an 68:48read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a laboratory study of 69 couples, aggression was highest when anger rumination was high, the habit of reinterpreting situations was low and alcohol was present, and those factors stacked rather than acting alone. What arrives at the end is built out of several stages, which is why there is more than one place to intervene. It was a laboratory task rather than a real argument at home.
Watkins LE, DiLillo D, Maldonado RC. (2015). The interactive effects of emotion regulation and alcohol intoxication on lab-based intimate partner aggression.. Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Each step is a place to do something else, and doing something else early takes less force than stopping late.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Everyone knows the line about sticks and stones. If words really could not hurt you, you would not still be turning over what he said.
When somebody insists angrily that they do not care, they usually care a great deal. The heat is the giveaway.
Broad claims about which nations bottle it up and which let it fly are entertaining and close to useless for any actual person in front of you. Ask instead.